Enjoy this day celebrating the ancient festival of the resurrection of the seasons, the rebirth of the year, the celebration of the new year, or its newer interpretation as specifically about a particular one of the born-to-a-virgin, talked-to-god(s), performed-miracles, and died-to-rise-again messiah-candidates. All the popular symbols (hatching eggs, bunnies, flowers,…
I was recently provided with a copy of Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sells Wars, Spend Election’s, and Destroy Democracy, by John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney. Written in 2005, this book is a great way to get an historical perspective on the state of journalism in America. “How bad have things gotten?” you might ask.
Our media system has become so dysfunctional that it repeatedly shows its willingness to stenographically report the Bush administration’s spin as truth “while rejecting expressions of reality as manifestations of partisanship that must be balanced with more spin.” (Page 4) The authors write that the media is a “lumbering and lazy media” that is ideally suited to the whims of “Karl Rove and the thousands of other paid liars.”
Our media system is so bad that American political discourse has become “meaningless.” There is no better way to exemplify the bankruptcy of the media system than the March 2003 press conference at which George Bush was not challenged by anyone in the Washington press corps with regard to the preemptive war he was about to launch. The members of the press “asked him not a single probing question about the flimsy case that had been made for war, nor its likely costs, nor about anything akin to an exit strategy.”
The authors argue that our elite reporters no longer show passion for truth, but rather passion only for access to those who wield power. Reporters for major media outlets have become …
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released a detailed yet accessible report addressing future energy supplies in the U.S.  The title of the report is Uncertainty about Future Oil Supply Makes It Important to Develop a Strategy for Addressing a Peak and Decline in Oil Production.
Here are some of the report’s conclusions:
Most studies estimate that oil production will peak sometime between now and 2040.
In the United States, alternative fuels and transportation technologies face challenges that could impede their ability to mitigate the consequences of a peak and decline in oil production, unless sufficient time and effort are brought to bear. For example, although corn ethanol production is technically feasible, it is more expensive to produce than gasoline and will require costly investments in infrastructure, such as pipelines and storage tanks, before it can become widely available as a primary fuel. Key alternative technologies currently supply the equivalent of only about 1 percent of U.S. consumption of petroleum products, and the Department of Energy (DOE) projects that even by 2015, they could displace only the equivalent of 4 percent of projected U.S. annual consumption. In such circumstances, an imminent peak and sharp decline in oil production could cause a worldwide recession.
The report also contains a section on Peak Oil: Oil Production Has Peaked in the United States and Most Other Countries Outside the Middle East. Here is an excerpt:
…According to IEA, most countries outside the Middle East have reached their peak in conventional oil production,
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIqk4agzKPE[/youtube] This little Harpers-Index-like compilation with compelling music is a full bag of potato chip tidbits of numerical exposition. The numbers seem accurate. At least those numbers that I have the background to know from other reputable sources. But what do they mean? The video simply concludes that change is…
We're all glad that the British sailors are back home.  Anyone following this story knows that these sailors were treated graciously by their Iranian captors. Nonetheless, while in captivity, the British sailors admitted that they had been trespassing in Iranian waters when whey were apprehended. But notice some of the things that…